Thanks for This One | Ted's Take

I divided this “comment” into sections, denoted by the dotted lines. At the end I have key points.
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1. Ovi’s celebrations are being exaggerated:

What I hated about Don Cherry’s bit was the clips he used of Ovi. He didn’t even try!!! He showed Alex pumping his fist. That is just like everyone else in the NHL! And Cherry even used a clip of Ovechkin raising his arms in the air, nothing more. Are you serious? Should Ovi just keep a stone face and skate to center ice or the bench and not acknowledge that a goal was scored?

How about last year? I remember watching a game in which Ovi scored, and he did a mild celebration. When Semin scored (It was either the tying goal or go-ahead goal), Ovechkin was even MORE excited! He jumped into the group hug and looked happier than Semin. That has “team player” written all over it!
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2. Why don’t we fix fighting first?

Here is my favorite part of Boswell’s article:
“The irony of the league is that fistfights, even those that leave blood on the ice, still don’t offend anyone.”

Seriously, the most elite league in the world doesn’t care if players drop their gloves and start throwing punches. I REALLY want to see misconduct penalties, at least for what they are talking about now (with the enforcers who drop their gloves and circle around with no real feeling involved: it is just so stupid).

We SHOULD take a cue from football players. Maybe not the dancing-in-the-end-zone stuff, but the keep-playing-the-game-and-don’t-throw-punches part.

I hate it when people say that without fighting, players would take cheap shots and the game would go dark. Are you kidding me? Let’s look at football. In football, you hit away from the ball. Everybody hits every play. You think those linemen don’t do something with their hands inside that the other players don’t like? Of course! Watch a game. You WILL see some players confronting each other occasionally. But they go their separate ways and keep playing. Guess what? They don’t take off their helmets and start punching their opponents’ faces! Players don’t suffer serious injuries because a player was mad and he couldn’t throw punches. It just doesn’t happen. And if there were no fighting in hockey, the same things would happen! It would be the same, except we would have more skilled players and fewer goons like Ggeorges Laraque. (I was laughing when I saw Mike Milbury’s thing during intermission on NBC. It showed Milan Lucic beat Laraque in a fight. Then, it showed Laraque trying to pick fights with Lucic. All Lucic had to do was play hockey with his gloves on, and he beat Georges to the puck every single time. Milbury described Laraque as an “out of shape baffoon.”) Oh yeah, and Brashear is no goon in my opinion. Sure, he fights. But he can lay some clean hits, because he can actually skate. Also, he brings out some nice moves from time-to-time that prove he belongs in the NHL, albeit on a low line.

Anyways, if football players (who hit all the time, every play, and away from the ball) can be good sports, hockey players DEFINITELY can. I never understood why some fans can’t get it past their thick skulls that fighting is unnecessary. For some reason though, they flip out when a player raises his arms in the air after a goal! In my games, nobody seems to need to fight. And guess what? We have a great time.
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3.If the players were meant to do the enforcing, we wouldn’t have refs. Or a real hockey game, for that matter.

Maybe the NHL needs to actually call cross-checks (I remember going to a game last year in which the refs were absolutely horrible. For example, one of the Bruins players cross checked a Capital squarely in the back. The stick broke BETWEEN HIS HANDS!!! How obvious can it be? No call.)

The refs should enforce the rules and the players should follow them.
—————————————————–
4. Don Cherry is a racist.

DON CHERRY IS SUCH A RACIST!
He says kids shouldn’t be like Russians. They smile after scoring! Instead, they should be like Crosby, who does the same stuff as Ovechkin (not the “hot stick” routine, but that was after Cherry’s rant). Instead of making clean hits like Ovechkin (in a body-checking league, of course. For non-hitting leagues, we should say “following the rules.”), he wants the kids to jump the opponent center as soon as the puck is dropped and act like a tough guy.

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Final Notes:
Cherry is totally wrong.

Boswell is totally right.

We don’t need to fight. (If you think we do, then just watch Georges Laraque try and keep up at the NHL level. It is better entertainment than watching him fight.)

Ovechkin is CERTAINLY NOT the most self-centered player in the league. At all.
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Irrelevant note:
The NHL media guide should provide correct phonetic spellings for the Russian players. (Evgeni, a common Russian name=”yev-GYE-nee” not “ehv-GE-nee”)

0 thoughts on “Thanks for This One”

Lucas on March 22, 2009 at 9:31 PM said:

Oh, and one more thing!

What about the Olympics? Players can celebrate goals, and the first period won’t be a “three-hour first period.”

Also, Don Cherry, the Canadian way isn’t completely right! You can play great hockey (Olympics) without having to drop the gloves (or, in Crosby’s case, drop your gloves and tackle the other center).

As I type, I am still amazed at Cherry’s suggestion that kids should be like Sidney Crosby.
Lucas on March 22, 2009 at 9:26 PM said:

I divided this “comment” into sections, denoted by the dotted lines. At the end I have key points.
————————————————–
1. Ovi’s celebrations are being exaggerated:

What I hated about Don Cherry’s bit was the clips he used of Ovi. He didn’t even try!!! He showed Alex pumping his fist. That is just like everyone else in the NHL! And Cherry even used a clip of Ovechkin raising his arms in the air, nothing more. Are you serious? Should Ovi just keep a stone face and skate to center ice or the bench and not acknowledge that a goal was scored?

How about last year? I remember watching a game in which Ovi scored, and he did a mild celebration. When Semin scored (It was either the tying goal or go-ahead goal), Ovechkin was even MORE excited! He jumped into the group hug and looked happier than Semin. That has “team player” written all over it!
—————————————————–
2. Why don’t we fix fighting first?

Here is my favorite part of Boswell’s article:
“The irony of the league is that fistfights, even those that leave blood on the ice, still don’t offend anyone.”

Seriously, the most elite league in the world doesn’t care if players drop their gloves and start throwing punches. I REALLY want to see misconduct penalties, at least for what they are talking about now (with the enforcers who drop their gloves and circle around with no real feeling involved: it is just so stupid).

We SHOULD take a cue from football players. Maybe not the dancing-in-the-end-zone stuff, but the keep-playing-the-game-and-don’t-throw-punches part.

I hate it when people say that without fighting, players would take cheap shots and the game would go dark. Are you kidding me? Let’s look at football. In football, you hit away from the ball. Everybody hits every play. You think those linemen don’t do something with their hands inside that the other players don’t like? Of course! Watch a game. You WILL see some players confronting each other occasionally. But they go their separate ways and keep playing. Guess what? They don’t take off their helmets and start punching their opponents’ faces! Players don’t suffer serious injuries because a player was mad and he couldn’t throw punches. It just doesn’t happen. And if there were no fighting in hockey, the same things would happen! It would be the same, except we would have more skilled players and fewer goons like Ggeorges Laraque. (I was laughing when I saw Mike Milbury’s thing during intermission on NBC. It showed Milan Lucic beat Laraque in a fight. Then, it showed Laraque trying to pick fights with Lucic. All Lucic had to do was play hockey with his gloves on, and he beat Georges to the puck every single time. Milbury described Laraque as an “out of shape baffoon.”) Oh yeah, and Brashear is no goon in my opinion. Sure, he fights. But he can lay some clean hits, because he can actually skate. Also, he brings out some nice moves from time-to-time that prove he belongs in the NHL, albeit on a low line.

Anyways, if football players (who hit all the time, every play, and away from the ball) can be good sports, hockey players DEFINITELY can. I never understood why some fans can’t get it past their thick skulls that fighting is unnecessary. For some reason though, they flip out when a player raises his arms in the air after a goal! In my games, nobody seems to need to fight. And guess what? We have a great time.
—————————————————
3.If the players were meant to do the enforcing, we wouldn’t have refs. Or a real hockey game, for that matter.

Maybe the NHL needs to actually call cross-checks (I remember going to a game last year in which the refs were absolutely horrible. For example, one of the Bruins players cross checked a Capital squarely in the back. The stick broke BETWEEN HIS HANDS!!! How obvious can it be? No call.)

The refs should enforce the rules and the players should follow them.
—————————————————–
4. Don Cherry is a racist.

DON CHERRY IS SUCH A RACIST!
He says kids shouldn’t be like Russians. They smile after scoring! Instead, they should be like Crosby, who does the same stuff as Ovechkin (not the “hot stick” routine, but that was after Cherry’s rant). Instead of making clean hits like Ovechkin (in a body-checking league, of course. For non-hitting leagues, we should say “following the rules.”), he wants the kids to jump the opponent center as soon as the puck is dropped and act like a tough guy.

——————————————————
Final Notes:
Cherry is totally wrong.

Boswell is totally right.

We don’t need to fight. (If you think we do, then just watch Georges Laraque try and keep up at the NHL level. It is better entertainment than watching him fight.)

Ovechkin is CERTAINLY NOT the most self-centered player in the league. At all.
——————-
Irrelevant note:
The NHL media guide should provide correct phonetic spellings for the Russian players. (Evgeni, a common Russian name=”yev-GYE-nee” not “ehv-GE-nee”)
John Patrick on March 21, 2009 at 9:37 PM said:

We don’t need this crap in the NHL, leave it for the oversized egos of the NFL.

I couldn’t believe my eyes when the best player in the world , the heart and soul of your team, got dangererously cross-checked in the boards tonight, with the game practically over, and the other gutless pukes on the ice did nothing about it. I saw Semin and Kozlov, Kozlov skated right by Brindamour without so much as a shove.
This is the team you think will go far in the playoffs?
Gutless pukes.
Ginger on March 21, 2009 at 1:42 PM said:

Great article and I agree with it. I love Bruce but I sure hope since he spoke to Ovechkin that he also spoke to Theodore, Backstrom & Green. People need to calm down especially the people wishing career ending injuries on Alex.

What I am really shocked about is caps fans complaining and talking about a guy having some fun and being more upset by that then 2 goals that were goals not giving to the capitals that night…where is the outrage for that?

But like you said Ted time to move on there is a big game tonight & I can’t wait. LETS GO CAPS!!!
stephanie on March 21, 2009 at 10:22 AM said:

http://www.brianpropp.com/bio.cfm

funny how this was rick tocchets teammate back in the 80′s and this guy used to taunt people after every goal…he may have thought it was cute, but everyone else hated it….so tocchet should think before he talks, lets hear his take on old number 26, brian propp…
mike on March 21, 2009 at 9:01 AM said:

I agree Ted, well written by Boz.
But let’s not act like these things have not happened before!!!
1) Tiger Williams (Canadian by the way Don Cherry!!) and his famous rodeo stick ride down the ice!
2) Kovalev and his “Moonwalk” after scoring.
3) Fleury and his famous running through his teammates to belly slide down the ice.
4) Selanne and his skeet shooting hockey stick with glove in mid-air routine.

I’m sure there are others that will come to mind over time, but let’s put this into perspective folks!!